Agricultural tractors are frequently equipped with loader attachments. Loader attachments are used on farms for numerous chores. These chores includes such tasks as cleaning livestock areas and buildings, handling bulk livestock feed, handling baled hay, and handling bulk seed containers. Hay bales that weighs over 1,000 pounds and seed containers that hold several hundred pounds of seed cannot be moved manually. Today a tractor equipped with a loader attachment is a necessity on most farms.
Loader attachments interfere with many agricultural tractor functions. They increase tractor length, increase tractor weight, may increase tractor height, reduce operator visibility, and shift weight from the rear wheels to the front steered wheels. Some farmers have avoided loader attachment interference with other tractor functions by having a tractor dedicated to loader use only and having other tractors that perform functions that do not require a loader attachment. Dedicating a tractor to loader use only is an expensive solution for many farmers.
The development of loader attachments that can be rapidly connected to a tractor and rapidly removed from a tractor has made it practical, for example, for a farmer to connect a loader attachment to a tractor to feed livestock before breakfast and to remove the loader and cultivate corn with a row crop cultivator mounted on the tractor after breakfast. Loader attachments that can be rapidly connected to a tractor are important labor saving devices for farmers and others who need to employ tractors with loaders for some tasks and tractors without loaders for other tasks. Some of the loader attachments with rapid connection capabilities that are currently available can be removed from a tractor in less than ten minutes and reattached to a tractor in about the same time. However, these loader all experience some problems.
Loaders with quick or rapid coupling features have pins or other locking members that lock the loader to the tractor. For these locking members to be inserted into a locking position, loader members have to be in horizontal and vertical alignment. The connecting and locking members also have to be able to transfer a force between the tractor and the loader bucket without failing. Many of the loaders that are currently available are difficult to align relative to the tractor so that they can be locked to the tractor. Many of these currently available loaders also have components that are frequently overloaded and damaged.
Alignment between loaders and tractors is controlled in at least one direction by adjustable stops on some loaders with rapid attaching capability. Adjustable stops can require frequent adjustment and may be overloaded. With adjustable stops a given loader can most likely only be mounted on one tractor without changing the adjustments. The adjustments do not allow for wear if the mating parts are subjected to wear. The adjustments require readjustment to correct for wear of mating parts.